News digest 27 November 2012

News digest 27 November 2012

27 November 2012

The top story this morning is the latest GDP figures which are confirmed as seeing 1 per cent growth for the third quarter of the year. While that is good news for the chancellor the underlying figures look shaky with the rise boosted by the Olympics. Construction saw a decline of 2.6 per cent while household expenditure rose by just 0.6 per cent as wages advanced just 1.4 per cent, effectively real terms pay cuts for ordinary workers. The next quarter will see if the service and manufacturing sectors can continue to support the economy or if this is just a lull before yet more stagnation, there’s still a lot for the chancellor to do.

Nevertheless, chancellor George Osborne has one less task. Yesterday he announced that the new governor of the Bank of England will be Mark Carney, who is Canadian and current governor of the Bank of Canada. There’s no mention of what attracted him to the £480,000 a year job which is 60 per cent higher than outgoing governor Mervyn King, although the additional resettlement package from the government should help handsomely in his move back to the UK. No news on whether he will have to give up his workplace rights for shares in the Bank, rather it is ordinary people whose rights are under attack, so sign Union Together’s letter to prime minister David Cameron and Osborne saying workers’ rights are not for sale.

And talking of jobs the FT highlights what could be one of the reasons why the jobless figures look better than they really are as it reports that a record number of over 50s have registered as self employed; the number has climbed to 14 per cent but 80 per cent of that rise was itself among over 50s. That could be because jobs are increasingly scare, with even the government’s back to work scheme failing to find jobs for 50,000 people.

And while politicians remain wrapped up in the Westminster bubble and a mix of the Leveson inquiry and hoping to win the upcoming by-elections, out in the real world the impact of how companies operate again comes to light. Kevin Maguire in the Mirror castigates Ford’s bosses for adding insult to injury to the 500 van workers facing the sack in Southampton after it asked its British staff to help in a sales drive fro the vans under a ‘Truck you trust’ theme, surely that should be the ‘Turkish truck you trust’ or does Ford not think that line is a goer for the biggest selling van in the UK?